All blunderbuss and bile

Two elements must be considered in relation to Michael Moore's controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11: the merits of the film itself, and the manner in which it has been sold to the public. While we'd all like to pretend that the former is more important, Moore has made so much of the alleged attempted suppression of his movie, now being marketed as 'The Film They Didn't Want You To See', that it is necessary to address this first.

For the record, there was never any doubt that Fahrenheit 9/11 would receive uncensored distribution, even when Disney decided to wash its hands of it. In fact, Moore's protestations at the time of the Cannes Film Festival were a cynical ploy to increase the profile of his movie. That Fahrenheit 9/11 would never have been a contender for the coveted Palme d'Or had the Cannes jury not believed that it was somehow standing up for freedom of speech by handing Moore the prize seems obvious.

Politically, playing the censorship card was a masterstroke, proving that whatever else he may be, Moore is an accomplished spin doctor. Yet such flagrant chicanery also raises serious questions about his integrity as a documentary maker, even for those like myself who are predisposed to embrace anything which savages the repulsive Bush and his dreadful adventures in Iraq.

To the movie, then. The first stanza of Fahrenheit 9/11 is vintage Moore, with George W Bush's hijacking of the 2000 election being evoked in a fashion which provokes heartbreaking laughter. 'Was it all a dream?' drawls Moore in his driest tones, as the media first hail Al Gore triumphant, then change their minds when 'something called Fox News' hands Florida to Bush.

A parade of righteous indignation follows as representatives of the disenfranchised black community are thwarted in their attempts to contest the results, and the new President's limousine is pelted with eggs. With his eye for the tragicomic news clip and ear for the quotable soundbite, Moore evokes a genuine air of catastrophe as Al Gore concedes defeat, something of a miracle considering what a useless lunk Al always was.

He also invests shots of Bush and his cohorts preparing themselves for a TV broadcast (brushing hair, straightening ties) with an almost demoniacal air of manipulation. The fact that the real manipulator here is Moore, filching footage which would make anyone look shifty, seems somehow irrelevant. From a dramatic point of view, it's a tremendous opening: grim, comic, ominous and heavy with the promise of dark revelations to come.

Sadly, the film doesn't deliver. Yes, there is biting humour in the montage of Dubya playing golf while America stumbles toward disaster, driving home the legitimate suggestion that Bush failed to respond to information indicating that al-Qaeda was planning to attack. Equally intriguing for budding conspiracy theorists is the unravelling of Saudi oil interests in various Bush family businesses, although the revelations of their ties to the extended bin Laden family will be old news to anyone who's read Moore's book Dude, Where's My Country?.

Loud warning bells should begin to ring, however, when Bush is shown apparently stupefied as he first learns of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, continuing to read My Pet Goat with a classroom of schoolchildren even as the Twin Towers burn. 'What on earth was he thinking?' asks Moore in voiceover, going on to suggest a mixture of panic, guilt and conniving deception as the minutes tick by.

While my political prejudices inclined me to agree, sober reflection demands that one consider the possibility that Bush was demonstrating an air of calm to rival Francis Drake, finishing his game of bowls before addressing himself to the Armada. We cannot know what went on in the President's head, but we can recognise the manner in which Moore manipulates an ambiguous image for his own ends.

From here, things go badly wrong, with the invasion of Iraq signalling a change of tone from dry, biting satire to woolly, emotional blackmail. Gradually, Moore's persona as a wry satirist gives way to his irritating alter-ego as a hectoring, self-righteous blunderbuss.

This is nothing new. In the final act of the otherwise excellent Bowling for Columbine, Moore shot himself in the foot by first ambushing a doddering Charlton Heston with demands for an apology for the high-school massacre, and then sanctimoniously laying a photograph of a deceased child outside Heston's house with all the pantomime panache of a shameless carnival huckster.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, he not only repeats but aggravates this error. Having first established Saddam's Iraq as a placid country in whose streets children gaily played (an image which even those who opposed the invasion would find hard to swallow), Moore batters us with a series of near pornographic shots of the carnage of war, images which are always awful, regardless of the justification (or otherwise) of military action.

Back in Flint, Michigan, Moore descends upon Lila Lipscomb, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, whose grief the film-maker milks without mercy. It's hard not to cringe at the spectacle of Moore, who elsewhere depicted the US troops as murderous heavy-metal fans, heartlessly recording Lipscomb's anguish as she weeps in front of the White House. It's not the honesty of her tears that is in question, it's Moore's editorial judgment. As I watched, my contempt for Bush was rivalled only by my growing revulsion for a film-maker who would resort to such tactics.

And, of course, there are the obligatory grandstanding stunts, such as Moore attempting to get Congressmen to enlist their kids for military service. Again, the problem lies not in the revealing fact that only one of them has a child serving in Iraq, but that Moore feels the need to upstage this bold statistic with the spectacle of his own campaigning presence.

Elsewhere, even the 'facts' seem shaky. Much is made of the Bush Administration allowing a number of Saudis to fly out of the country in the wake of the twin towers attacks, even though all air traffic had been grounded. 'No one could fly,' says Moore, 'not even Ricky Martin', getting a hearty laugh out of the plight of the stranded Latino popstar.

Yet the independent 11 September commission reported that there was no credible evidence that any Saudis had flown out of the United States while national air space was closed. I don't know which version is true, but in light of Moore's willingness to elaborate tales of his battles against the forces of censorship, I'm disinclined to take his word for it.

In the end and, perhaps most damningly, all the emotive huffing and puffing tends toward tedium, an absolute disaster for a film which relies on its crowd-pleasing potential to popularise a political message. As someone who was utterly opposed to the Iraq war and who believes wholeheartedly that Bush should not just be toppled but tried, I was surprised at how little empathy I felt for the polemical rhetoric of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Clearly, it wasn't designed to win my support, as the absence of all but one reference to Tony Blair's role in this debacle proves (Moore here seems even less interested in world politics than Bush). But on the level of satirical documentary film-making, Fahrenheit 9/11 frequently falls so far short of journalistic adequacy as to become risible.

If you want truly entertaining insights into the realities of American imperialism, check out Errol Morris's superb documentary, The Fog of War. As for Michael Moore, ask yourself this question: would you buy a used car from this man? Exactly.